The invention relates to a carrying tower for metallurgical vessels, in particular for a continuous casting plant. The tower includes at least one carrying arm for accommodating the metallurgical vessel, in particular a casting ladle or a tundish, which arm projects from a carrying column and includes a weighing device. The carrying arm is designed to be divided and the carrying arm parts thus formed are connected with each other articulately about a horizontal axis.
In metallurgical plants there is always a need to know exactly and to control the amount of the contents of metallurgical vessels. In particular, when continuously casting it is advantageous, for safeguarding the continuity of casting, to continuously weigh the casting ladle and the distributing vessel (tundish) so that the amount of the contents in these metallurgical vessels is always known, a ladle exchange thus being feasible before the ladle is empty.
It is known, for the purpose of weighing, to equip carrying arrangements for metallurgical vessels with pressure measuring devices. Thus, it is known for instance from U.S. Pat. No. 3,587,760 to place the vessel to be weighed onto a frame which is supported against a movable base via pressure measuring devices.
For accommodating the horizontal forces falsifying the measured result, vertical guides are provided in the known constructions. With these guides, which can also be designed as guide rods, falsifications of the measuring results still occur, however, due to frictional forces.
From French Pat. No. 2,234,946 a ladle carrying tower of the initially-described kind is known, comprising two carrying arms which are each assembled of several lugs forming a linkage parallelogram. Each of the carrying arms is pivotable about the links of the lugs provided at the carrying tower by means of a pressure medium cylinder, whereby the casting ladle can be lifted and lowered. In one of the links of the four-bar linkage, a weighing device is installed. With this construction there is also the disadvantage that the measuring result is falsified during weighing by horizontal forces acting upon the link and by frictional forces occurring within the link.